Since the MacPlay name brand returned nearly two years ago, Mac gamers have been practically begging them to bring the rest of the Fallout franchise to the Mac, and possibly re-publish the original Fallout. Last week, one of those wishes was granted and with today’s announcement that MacPlay will publish Fallout 2, there leaves only Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel.

The world of Fallout is set in a post-apocalyptic era, where the Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war. Survivors of this disaster are trying to pick up the pieces and rebuild civilization. All the while, mutated humans and animals, gangs and raiders are running amuck, harassing defenseless cities and traders.

Fallout 2 is set approximately 50 years after the events of the original Fallout, where you saved your fellow vault-mates from certain doom. As a descendent of the original Vault Dweller, you are given the daunting task of finding the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K. for short), which will save your dying village. If this sounds familiar to the find-the-water-chip-before-we-all-die plot of the first Fallout, then it should.

While the premise may not be completely original, Fallout 2 sticks to the tried and true formula that made the game an instant success. Along the way, the team at Black Isle Studios addressed the complaints of Fallout fans by incorporating several gameplay improvements. RPG veterans and novices alike will find Fallout 2 easy to jump into. As someone who views most RPGs as complex and time consuming, I found the Fallout series to be completely engrossing in both storyline and gameplay.

For a game that is approaching its 4 year anniversary (it was released for the PC in November 1998), its graphics are understandably dated. While Fallout 2 doesn’t use any fancy OpenGL trickery, the 2D graphics convey the atmosphere quite well. Although some of the places you visit will be bustling with people, the world still has that barren, scorched earth environment that carried over from the first game. Even the more developed cities are gritty-looking and appear primitive and run down.